FBI has hit list of 1,000 Anonymous hackers

The FBI is using a hit list of 1,000 IP addresses which were used to attack Internet commerce site PayPal in an attempt to collar key members of leaderless hacking collective Anonymous.

The web payments company provided the US law enforcement agency with a USB thumb drive containing data gleaned from Radware reports of the 1,000 addresses which sent the biggest packets of trash data fired at PayPal by the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, the preferred weapon of Anonymous when it carries out Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

The FBI has already served 40 warrants for people associated with those addresses, according to Wired, and is currently working its way down the list.

An arrest warrant (PDF) issued by the FBI states that, on December 15th 2010, PayPal's Jon Oberton handed a thumb drive to Special Agent Adam Reynolds, "containing logs and reports detailing information regarding approximately 1,000 IP addresses that sent malicious network packets to PayPal during the DDoS attacks. The 1,000 addresses were derived from logs created created by a PayPal-owned Radware device. According to Oberton, this list represents the IP addresses that sent the largest number of packets."

Radware is a network device used to provide security and detect known intrusions. It examines all traffic and decides what is legitimate traffic and what is not, blocking anything iffy.

The FBI is currently using information gleaned from ISPs in an attempt to identify those involved in the attack on PayPal which was initiated after the company refused to process donations made to online whistle-blower WikiLeaks.

Computer equipment was seized from a Texas home last week based on the IP information provided by PayPal but nobody was arrested.